This Project is based on Costco

Outline for the Project

(approval needed for the company)

This group project is designed to test your ability to integrate the concepts you have learned in marketing. The objective is to develop a marketing strategy for a business (of your choice) that you think would be successful in the short run and the long run. Factual evidence will have to be used along with creativity when developing the desired marketing strategy. The report will be typed (double spaced, letter quality) in the format of a marketing plan, as given below. The report is approximately 20-25 pages long.

• Select a national/international corporation (publicly traded in the stock exchange, vou need to get my approval for the company vou choose).

• Provide an executive summary of your plan (1 page long)

• Spend some time with the manager/owner of the business, obtaining relevant information for the project (this part is optional). Also do a thorough research on the business since its inception, i.e., how has the business evolved since its birth, the major changes in the life of the business, etc.

• Provide a description of the business and its parent company, the organizational structure. etc. What do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of the business.

• Give a brief historical background of the environment in which the business is operating, i.e. industry, competitors, etc. Draw a strategic map of the industry.

• Design a questionnaire and conduct a survey of potential and current customers of the business. The questionnaire will give vou information about their perception, i.e. how satisfied/dissatisfied they are about the business's offerimps vis-a-vis its closest competitors, etc.

• Based on the responses, find out the problem(s) that the business has.Provide a tabulated summary of the findings:

• Respondent profile: how many responded and did not respond to the survey, demographic of the respondents

• Other responses about their shopping habit : e.g., consumption frequency, the criteria for buying, preference, etc.
• Comparison of your company with its three closest competitors on the strategic marketing variables: e.g., bar chart/histogram, cross-tab sex with price, education with quality, income with media habit, etc. Perform other statistical analysis (ANOVA, etc.,) on the data showing significant differences between competitors, etc.

• Formulate a marketing stratepy that would address the problem (based on the findings)

A. Specifically, should the product/service be altered, etc.

B. Should the price be the same? Include other aspects of the pricing decision, i.e. cost, competition, economy, etc

C. The promotion decision:

• Make a commercial, and a print ad for the company
• How much should be spent on advertising (find out the rates for advertising on TV, radio and newspaper in Pueblo), the message, and media schedule?
• How much should be spent in sales promotion and the schedule of the different types of sales promotion?
• Should more salespeople be hired or some fired?
• Public relations, i.e. what should the company do to enhance its image, etc., in the community?

D. Decision on distribution. Should the company use any other methods that may be

different than what it is using now.

• Forecast sales in the short run using different techniques.
• Create a scenario for the next 5 - 10 years for the industry and the business, it., how should the business position itself in the future in view of the changing environment.